Ancient Materials and New Ideas with Garnier & Linker

The light filters through the alabasters stone, gently illuminating a host of colors and veins that have been formed over thousands of years by the hands of the weather and land. It is through the French...

The light filters through the alabasters stone, gently illuminating a host of colors and veins that have been formed over thousands of years by the hands of the weather and land. It is through the French creators, Guillaume Garnier and Florent Linker who founded their company Garnier Linker in 2015, that this beauty is made visible. Their collection of lights combine ancient materials of alabaster, obsidian and volcanic stone with brass and bronze to create lighting that could be considered both pieces of art and well as functional objects. Each piece is designed by Garnier & Linker and handmade by master French craftsmen.

These lights and furniture from their Kitayama Collection of furniture are on display at the Spazio Nobile stand at the Biennale Interieur Kortrijk. The scenography of the stand was also designed by Garnier & Linker who met when they were training at Paris’s École Camondo, a school for interior architects and designers. This background gives them a unique viewpoint from which to create products that can be used by interior designers, decorator and architects.

Like the lighting series, the furniture in the Kitayama collection started from a raw material that has a long history and an unusual rarity. The wood that is used for the furniture is called Kitayama cedar and is sourced from the northern Kyoto mountain forests in Japan. The trees have been carefully shaped by humans for 600 years in order to ensure their trunks grow straight and do not have any knots. Traditionally used for tea houses, Garnier & Linker re-contextualize the material for contemporary spaces, emphasizing the naturally bumpy texture of the trees in contrast to the perfection of the grain.